


A Monochrome World

by winterune



Series: Natsume Week 2019 [1]
Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Fantasy, Gen, Magical Trinkets, Supernatural Elements, Tumblr: Natsume Week, Tumblr: Natsume Week 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 18:14:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19446886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterune/pseuds/winterune
Summary: Natsume was coming home from school when he spotted a new antique store. He'd heard Sasada and Taki talking about it. Inside, there was a room filled with framed monochrome pictures hanging around the entire wall and when he looked closer, he found the pictures to be moving.





	A Monochrome World

**Author's Note:**

> This is an entry for the Natsume Week 2019 event on tumblr  
> Day 1 Prompt: Color/Monochrome
> 
> I wrote it in a rush, so I'm sorry for the typos or weird choices of words etc. I hope you enjoy^^  
> (note: I named my OC Seiji because that was the first name that came to me and I've always liked that name, but I just remembered that Matoba's name is Seiji and I'm too lazy to change my OC's name ^^; I'm sorry for that)

On his way home from school, Natsume came across an antique store. An old looking store that looked as though it came right out of a book. He had never seen it before. Was it new? He remembered Sasada mentioning something like it a few days ago. She and Taki had immediately went to check it out later that day.

A middle-aged man was sweeping the pavement in front of him. He noticed Natsume then, and looked up, an affable smile on his face. “Would you like to take a look?” he asked. His hair was already graying and his eyes were warm. There was something in his features that seemed rather inviting so Natsume found himself unable to refuse.

The glass panes at the storefront showed all kinds of little ornaments, lamps, music boxes, and so on. From the outside, the store looked small. It seemed cluttered if you look at it through the glass panes, but when you entered, the room suddenly became spacious and Natsume had to wonder if it was a trick of the light.

He wasn’t the only one there. A woman was looking over set of cups atop a wooden dresser. A couple students were standing near the back peering into what looked to be a little snow globe. Natsume walked through the aisles one by one and was fascinated by the things he found: small trinkets behind glass shelves, drawers and dressers that looked to be at least fifty years old, a couple old Japanese dolls and statues, and several globes nestled in the corner.

Suddenly, he came upon a room with a pretty chandelier hanging from the ceiling and framed pictures on the wall all around. Big ones, small ones. Some were propped on desks or end tables. These pictures were pretty old judging from their monochrome color. A photograph of a couple and their newborn child in front of a house. Another was of the town years ago, with people walking in the streets. A lone table sat at the center of the room with only a single old camera sitting on top of it.

Natsume picked the camera up. It looked really old and seemed fragile at the touch. The lens was a bit greasy and when he tried taking a photo, the shutter wouldn’t work.

Why would something broken like this be sold?

That’s when he noticed a slight movement in the corner of his eye. Natsume looked up, but there was no one else in the room. _Weird_ , he thought. He was about to shift his gaze back on the camera when another movement caught his eye, and this time it came from in front of him. Nothing was there but a framed photo of what looked to be a bustling city street. He would have ignored it if he hadn't noticed the people _walking_ inside the photo.

Natsume’s jaw slackened and he almost lost his hold on the camera. He couldn’t believe his eyes. The people—they were really walking, and talking. The cars drove past the frame only to return from the other side a few moments later.

He glanced at the next photo: a family photo in a veranda of a traditional Japanese house. Except that after a while, the group broke apart. The children stood up and ran around. The oldest went and disappeared inside the house. The mother called to her children before rushing to prepare for the day. The father picked up a newspaper and sat on the veranda, smiling at his children before shifting his attention to the paper in his hands.

 _This is so weird_ , he thought. How could this happen? He looked down at the camera still in his hold. Could they be created by this fragile old thing?

The photo after that was of a waterfall in the forest. Nothing out of the ordinary, except that he could see the water falling down the cliff and the occasional sway of leaves. He waited a moment and a black bird took off into the sky from a nearby tree.

Without thinking, Natsume held out a hand toward the photo, wondering if he’d find a hidden world inside, only to feel glass meeting his touch. The cool sensation brought him back to his senses and he retracted his hand, just as a deep voice called out to him from the door.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

It was the old man from the storefront and he stood on the doorway, his kind eyes boring into Natsume. Natsume hadn’t heard his approach. Granted, he had been too absorbed on the photographs to notice anything, but…something told him he shouldn’t take the old man lightly. His grip on the camera tightened and he took a step back, distancing himself—and the Book of Friends—from the man.

The store owner noticed it and his eyes widened ever so slightly. Then a wide smile graced his lips and he chuckled. “Please, don't be alarmed. I mean you no harm,” he said. “My name is Seiji and I am the master of this store.”

“Seiji-san?” Natsume repeated his name.

Seiji nodded. “Tell me, are you a relative of Reiko Natsume?”

Natsume blinked in surprise.

Seiji chuckled again. “No need to be surprised. The fact that you found this room by yourself is enough telltale of the power you possess. And the only human with such powers without any exorcist affiliation I know was Reiko. Not to mention you do look alike.”

 _A youkai?_ was Natsume’s first thoughts, all the while wondering what this possible-youkai wanted from him—its name back, or the Book itself.

“And rest assured,” Seiji said as he entered the room and approached an end table, where a single framed photo stood. His eyes took on a faraway look as he gazed on the photograph there. “I am as much of a human as you.”

The words were already in his mouth but Natsume held them back, wondering how much he could trust this man. But Seiji knew Reiko and though his gut had told him to be wary, Natsume didn’t sense any malicious intent.

“You can see them?” he asked after a while.

Seiji looked up from the picture and met Natsume’s eyes. “Yes, I can.”

“Are you an exorcist?”

“I am not. I am, let’s say, a collector. As you can see from my store, I deal with trinkets and ornaments, including magical ones.”

Natsume’s mouth was agape. “Are you telling me all those things you have there are youkai—”

“Heavens, no!” Seiji exclaimed. “They’re normal antiques. I store my other trinkets in another place such as this and only those with a certain level of spiritual power can see it. Such as yourself.” A smile, warm and kind.

From Seiji’s disposition, Natsume could tell the old man was sincere. If he’s not a youkai, there was a slim chance that he would know about the Book. What harm could telling him about Reiko do to Natsume?

“Reiko was my grandmother,” Natsume answered his previous question.

“Ah!" Seiji exclaimed in pure delight. "So she made a family then?" 

“But unfortunately, she has passed away."

The light in Seiji’s eyes visibly dimmed, his shoulders sagging slightly, sorrow lining his features. “I’m terribly sorry to hear that,” his voice was a quiet murmur. He looked back at the picture on the table and picked it up, a wistful smile tugging on his lips. “I met her shortly in my youth and she left quite an impression on me. In fact,”—he looked up, a hand encompassing the entire room—“she was the one who came up with this idea.

“There was a youkai once who lived inside the camera. With every picture it took, it took away the people’s lives, trapping them inside the photographs it created. Not knowing about the youkai residing there, the camera became known to be cursed and that was when my father came upon it. He put it on sale in our store but no one wanted to buy it. A girl came by one day, and upon seeing the camera on sale, asked to have a look.

“I was in middle school back then and I wanted to get rid of the camera. To be honest, I was quite afraid of it. She came when I was minding the store by myself and I didn’t care to charge her when she asked for it. Curious, I followed her to a deserted place by the forest and I was surprised to see her tapping the thing and asking the youkai to come out. ‘I know you’re there,’ she’d said, as though coaxing a child to come out of hiding.

“She was carrying a baseball bat then, and if you think about, it was quite funny,” Seiji said, laughing under his breath. “Asking someone to come out with a baseball bat in hand, of course the youkai wouldn’t come out. So instead, she challenged it to a duel: that if it managed to capture her in its photograph in the next thirty seconds, it’d win, but if it failed, Reiko told it to write its name on a piece of paper and to leave the camera behind.

“I’d thought then how stupid the gamble was. Stupid…or brave. I thought of course the youkai would win and the girl would lose her life, especially when I saw how the camera started jumping and clicking by itself. But Reiko was fast and thirty seconds passed with the youkai not managing to capture Reiko in any of its shots.”

Seiji smiled at the framed picture in his hand. “Youkai are funny, aren’t they? For all their talk of immortality and power, they fell prey to the whims of a sixteen-year-old girl. And they are creatures of their words, so even despite any unfairness happening in a game, they would still abide by their promise. The youkai left after writing its name and Reiko picked up the camera.

“How mortified I was when she found out I had witnessed the whole thing. Reiko smiled at me when she gave me the camera back, and yet, I could not feel the energy she had had when she was challenging the youkai. She felt empty and resigned.

“She convinced me to take a picture of her. I was afraid, though I knew the youkai was gone. But there was nothing else we could experiment on, so I directed the camera at her and she smiled.

“When the picture came out and she didn’t disappear, I knew we had succeeded. But we noticed there was something different with it: Reiko in the picture was moving. She waved at us, walked around, jumped on a tree, danced. If we could hear anything happening in this monochrome world, I think we would have heard her laugh.”

Seiji finished his story and Natsume felt his throat closing up. The old man held out the frame in his hand and in it was that very same picture of Reiko, a girl his age whom he often saw whenever he returned a youkai’s name. Reiko was in her school uniform, a big silly grin plastered on her face, fingers held out to form a V sign. Then she laughed and she waved happily at them and twirled in her skirt before running around to jump on a tree and dangled off a branch.

Reiko looked happy.

“The youkai probably had resided in the camera for so long that some of its powers had been transferred to it,” Seiji went on. “So every time I take a picture of something, it’ll move. She told me I could do some business with it, but moving pictures are too much for normal people so instead I put it, and the pictures I’ve taken with it, on sale for the people who are in search for magical trinkets.

“Here,” Seiji handed the frame to Natsume. “For you. I wish I could have met her again.”

Natsume held the frame gently, his eyes refusing to leave Reiko’s smiling face. Seiji said Reiko’s gamble was stupid or brave, but it didn’t feel like that to him. Reiko gambled away her life, probably because she wanted to escape this world to live inside a virtual one. What would the world inside the photograph be like? Would everything be black and white? Would it be small and empty? Or would it be like a perfect copy of this world but you can go anywhere you please without anyone judging you?

“Thank you,” Natsume murmured quietly. Reiko was still smiling at him and Natsume found himself smiling back.

**~ END ~**

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you liked it^^ Please leave a comment or two and tell me what you think :D Thanks!


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